One type of semiconductor devices are trench devices such as trench transistors, e.g. trench field effect transistors (FETs) or trench insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs). Trench devices having a high or very high integration density may include a large number (e.g. thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions, or even more) of cells, sometimes also referred to as a cell field. Already one or a few defective cells in a cell field may affect a device's operating behavior and may even render a device unusable. Thus, it may be desirable to detect devices with defective cells in a pre-test of the devices (e.g. in a front end processing stage), for example in order to prevent defective devices from being delivered to customers.